Riddle, Theresa

ORAL HISTORY OF THERESA RIDDLE
Interviewed and filmed by Keith McDaniel
March 29, 2011
Mr. McDaniel: I’m Keith McDaniel, and today is March 29, 2011, and I’m here with Miss Theresa Riddle, and thank you for taking time to be with us.
Ms. Riddle: Glad to help.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, let’s go back and just talk about where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
Ms. Riddle: Well, I was born in Athens, Georgia, and I grew up there. I went to a trade school in Atlanta after completing high school, and I went back to Athens and lived there until after I married.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, what kind of trade school did you go to?
Ms. Riddle: A beauty school.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, a beauty school. Okay.
Ms. Riddle: After I got married, my husband was in service, but we moved to Chicago when he got out, and we lived there as long as we were together.
Mr. McDaniel: Now what year did you graduate high school?
Ms. Riddle: 1948.
Mr. McDaniel: So you went to Atlanta about then.
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: ’48, and how long were you in Atlanta, a year?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, but I couldn’t go to the school that I wanted to go to when I got out of high school. They had a rule: I wasn’t eighteen years old.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Riddle: I had to wait until I was eighteen years old. So I went back home, and my family had a neighborhood grocery store, but I didn’t want to work there. I had worked there all my life.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: I got a job in a ladies apparel shop doing different things, including the window decorations. I did that for a while, and then I went back to school, and upon completion, I came back to Athens and I worked in a beauty shop until I got ready to go to Chicago.
Mr. McDaniel: So once you got through in Atlanta and –
Ms. Riddle: I got my license –
Mr. McDaniel: – got your license, you went back –
Ms. Riddle: I took the state board and I got my license.
Mr. McDaniel: So you went back to Athens and worked in a beauty shop there. How long were you there?
Ms. Riddle: I was there about maybe five years.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Four or five years.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you meet your husband while you were there?
Ms. Riddle: We went to high school together. I met him, well, actually, in junior high school. When the Korean War started, he went in service, and he came home. We didn’t get along well. We should have stayed away from each other, but we were always arguing with each other, and then we got married.
Mr. McDaniel: It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: But it didn’t last. I left Chicago. I took the children and left Chicago, and I went to Atlanta, and in Atlanta I somehow had some information about a doctor who needed some help, and I went and interviewed with his wife. The problem was, she was having a difficult pregnancy and she needed someone there. Johnny was about four years old, and she needed somebody to help her with him in the evening.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: I went there about four o’clock every day and stayed until Johnny was in bed and it just kind of expanded. I went to the office and worked one day a week.
Mr. McDaniel: How long were you in Chicago?
Ms. Riddle: I was in Chicago from I guess ’53 to ’58, ’59, because Brian was born in ’58. In ’59, I went back to Georgia, and I stayed in Atlanta for a year, and I was about to really settle in in Atlanta, and I told my grandmother, who was still running the store in Athens, I told her I was going to try to find a house, and she said, “Before you do that, come home. I want to talk to you.” So, the children and I went home one weekend, and it was pleasant. And she never did say why she wanted to talk to me. So we were getting ready to get a taxi to go to the bus station, and I said, “Well, we’re getting ready to go,” and tears came in her eyes, and she said, “The doctor has told me I’m going to have to stop working in the store, and I don’t want to see it closed, and I don’t want to see someone else running it. If you’ll come here and work in the store, I’ll see to it that you and your children don’t want for anything.” I said, “Okay.” At this point, I was still working for the Bryant’s, and I said, “Well, as soon as Mrs. Bryant has her baby, I promised to stay there and see her through this pregnancy, and, as soon as that happens, I’ll come back.” So, I did, and I worked in the store, the place I hated. I guess it’s because I had to do it when I was growing up, and the longer I stayed there, the more responsibility I took on for the store, and she just kind of settled down and enjoyed life.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: She was even able to do some traveling, and I was glad. She had been a good grandmother, and when my parents were divorced, she took us so we didn’t have to be separated. We didn’t have to be going from place to place.
Mr. McDaniel: So, she raised you, basically?
Ms. Riddle: More or less. Yes. My mother worked for a Navy school, and it was taking part of the University of Georgia, and she worked there until it closed, and when it closed there was a dietician there who knew her, who came to Oak Ridge, and when she came to Oak Ridge, a lot of the people who had worked for her were no longer working because this was a pretty large facility and it was closing, and she sent for my mother. See, my mother was a teacher before she married my daddy. She came to Oak Ridge and was put to work at the hospital in the formula room. In those days, each baby had his own special formula, and her knowledge of math made it easy for her to do it, and she stayed there as long as they had a formula room. And when they closed the formula room, she went to pediatrics and worked there because there were always babies who had to have a special formula, and this is what she did until she retired, and she retired – she got sick. I knew she didn’t look good, and I asked her, I said, “Why don’t you see a specialist or something?” “Well, I’m doing fine now.” Her birthday was January 16th, and I called her on her birthday to wish her a happy birthday, and I asked her, “How are you doing?” She says, “I’m doing just fine.” I think it was on the 20th of January, her neighbor called me and said, “Your mother is in the hospital and they’re going to operate.” This was in January of 1968. I said, “I’ll be there.” So, I got a bus and I came up. Coming into Knoxville, we hit the worst snow. It was terrible, but we made it, and I called the lady. I said, “As soon as the next bus comes in to go to Oak Ridge, I’ll be there.” She said, “You’re at the bus station in Knoxville?” and I said, “Yes.” She said, “I’ll send somebody for you.” But it wasn’t snowing in Oak Ridge, so she didn’t know that it was snowing, but the person that she sent was a skillful driver, and she made it, but there were wrecks all along the way. I got here, she had already had surgery, and they brought her out to take her to ICU, and the doctor came out to talk to me and he said, “She’s doing okay now, but this is bad news. She has about a year to live.”
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Ms. Riddle: I said, “Well, when she gets over this initial surgery, would it be okay for me to take her home with me?” He said, “No, I’d rather she stayed here because we have facilities and experts, and she would do a lot better.” So, I said, “Okay, I’ll have to move here, then.” She stayed in the hospital about a week, something like that, and I didn’t talk to her about it because I didn’t tell her that she had cancer, and I told her, I said, “Well, you know, it’s hard to leave the children,” although the house that I lived in was next door to my father’s house.” I said, “It’s hard to leave them, so why don’t I just move here so when you need me, I’ll be here?” She said, “Well, just wait until school closes,” so I did, and when school closed June 15th, we moved here. It was awful.
Mr. McDaniel: That was ’69?
Ms. Riddle: 1968.
Mr. McDaniel: June 15, 1968. Yes. Why was it awful?
Ms. Riddle: The children didn’t want to come here. They were satisfied where they were.
Mr. McDaniel: How old were they by now?
Ms. Riddle: One was ready to start junior high school.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, so he was ten or eleven, I guess?
Ms. Riddle: He was about eleven, and the other one was two years younger. I had to enroll them in school here, a whole different system. One went to Jefferson, and the other one went to Woodland. The one who went –
Mr. McDaniel: When you moved here, where did you live?
Ms. Riddle: My mother had a house. She had a duplex, and she was living in half of it, and someone else was living in the other, so she told them that she was going to have to have the whole house. So we moved in with her.
Mr. McDaniel: Where was that?
Ms. Riddle: On Spelman Avenue. The only place I ever lived in Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? And you still live there?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and the children went to school, and I had a hard time that first year with the oldest one. They were strangers, and they didn’t know the routine. They didn’t know who was whose cousin, and there were a lot of fights, and that oldest one had reached the point where he’d fight if you looked at him.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: He was always ready to fight. The youngest one didn’t. So, after I got the oldest one calmed down, it turned out that he was okay. By the time he got to high school, he was doing what – and I encouraged him to take typing because I knew his interest in sports, and he wrote for the Oak Leaf while he was in high school, sports-related, and the younger one was small, a little guy, but he was fast, and he liked football, so he got involved with football at the Boys Club.
Mr. McDaniel: So, after a while, they kind of settled in?
Ms. Riddle: They settled in. My youngest son told me not long ago, he said, “You know, one of the worst things that happened to us coming to Oak Ridge, we didn’t know who was related to who, and if you say anything about anybody, it was their cousin.” Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly.
Ms. Riddle: But they made it, and Reggie graduated. He went in the Navy, and they gave him a discharge because he had a sinking syndrome.
Mr. McDaniel: What is that?
Ms. Riddle: There are people who can swim but they don’t float, and he was one of those.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: So, they gave him a discharge, and he came back at a time when I needed him because my mother had been in and out of the hospital, and he stayed there with her.
Mr. McDaniel: So, she lived a while, didn’t she?
Ms. Riddle: Yes. He said one year, and oh, I guess it was ’72 that she got sick again, and another doctor in that group operated on her this time, and he said, “Well, she’s got a year.” No, he said, “She’s got six months,” and I never told her that. She did okay for another year or two, from ’68 to ’75. She died in ’75. But the last time, Dr. Hendricks, he said, “I think we’ve hit the end of the line.” Well, we’d been lucky so far.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, she’d lived seven years from that first surgery.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, so we just prepared, and as God would have it, Reggie came home and he was there with her. I’d call from work. I tried to save my days so that when she was really bad I could be with her, and I’d call and he had a way of telling me how she was doing without actually saying it. It worked out fine. Well, finally, I came home one day and I realized that she was a lot sicker than she had been, so I called the oncologist and he said, “The hospital’s full. As soon as we can get a bed, we’ll put her in the hospital. That would make life better for her because she could get her IVs going.” She could be comfortable. She had reached a point where she couldn’t swallow. It was terrible. But that night was the worst night. I was up and down all night with her. She had a little couch in her bedroom, and I stayed in there on that little couch, and the next morning I got up and I said, “You’re feeling better?” And she said, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Would you like some coffee?” She said, “Yes, a half a cup.” I brought the coffee, I made a cup for myself, and I got the paper. I gave her the coffee and stood there with her while she sipped it, and she said, “That’s all I want.” She was sitting on the side of the bed, and she turned around to lie down, and she hugged me but she didn’t say anything, and she turned around and lay down, and something told me, “Check on her,” – I was going to sit on the porch and read the paper – and she was gone.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Well, you know, I did what I could.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure you did.
Ms. Riddle: And my reason for being here no longer existed, and these children, who left Athens crying, no longer wanted to go back to Athens –
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, they loved it here.
Ms. Riddle: – and I stayed here with them.
Mr. McDaniel: I’m sure that was a hard time for you, and from ’68 to ’75, I mean, you know, not only was your mother very ill and you didn’t really want to be here, your family didn’t want to come, so it was tough for you, wasn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: It was, but in the process – you know, every day, I make the most of it. Someone told me that Community Action had a program that I might could get a job through, so I went over and they said that they had had a job at a lab but it was filled, and if I was willing to work at the hospital, they would see what they could do. So I worked at the hospital four days a week, but I was paid by Community Action. One day a week, I went to Community Action. The system was set up so that people who didn’t have an education, who could not read, write, or count, Friday was the day to learn.
Mr. McDaniel: To learn, right.
Ms. Riddle: And, as it turned out, I was one of those who I didn’t need that, so I was trying to help those who did, and I spent Friday there, but that was part of the contract. At the end of six months, the hospital hired me.
Mr. McDaniel: Was this early on, right after you came to Oak Ridge?
Ms. Riddle: This was before my mother died. It was ’69 I started working at the hospital, and I worked various areas. I was called ‘occasional,’ and sometimes I worked two shifts a day. I’d go in at seven o’clock, go home, come back at eleven.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and my mother said one day, “Honey, you need to stop that.” I said, “Well, I’ll have to make it while I can.”
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly. We’re going to come back and pick back up here in a minute, but what happened to your grandmother and the store after you left?
Ms. Riddle: Oh, she died.
Mr. McDaniel: Did she?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and when she was doing her will, she asked me if I wanted the store, and by this time I realized that it was more than one person, it needed more than one person, and I had the two boys and they could help me, but sooner or later they would be leaving, and I said, “No, I don’t want the store,” so she gave me her house instead. And the children and I moved into the house, and my father married the second time and he had eight children, and he had plenty of help to work in the store, so I let somebody else bear that burden.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, was that his mother?
Ms. Riddle: It was his mother and he was an only child, and he acted like an only child. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] So, he had eight children. Now, was this with your mother?
Ms. Riddle: No, he had eight children with his second wife. My mother had four children, one died, and there were just three of us, two brothers. In the midst of this, before my mother died, in ’72 my brother died in Atlanta. He was working in Atlanta, and he died. My mother died in ’75, in June of ’75. In March of ’76, the youngest brother of the three of us died.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: I had a call that he was dead, and I went, and my daddy was sick and I took care of the arrangements. Dad went in the hospital. I stopped at the hospital on my way out after it was all done, and he told me what he had. I said, “Well, everything is taken care of,” because Ray had been in service. He had that kind of insurance. He was okay; he was covered. I did his business, and it didn’t cost me a lot. So, he said, “Well, when I get out of the hospital, I’ll be in touch with you,” and before the week was over, I had a call: he was dead.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: So, I went back, but I didn’t worry too much. I worried, but I didn’t have the sole responsibility because he had a wife and eight children. I dealt with that, and this is within close to a year, I had lost two –
Mr. McDaniel: Your mother, your father and your younger brother.
Ms. Riddle: – right.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Ms. Riddle: But you just keep pushing. You have to.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So, after your mother passed away, by this time I guess your boys, I mean they were grown, practically, weren’t they?
Ms. Riddle: The oldest one had gone in the Navy and come out, and the youngest one was I think a senior in high school.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay, right, so they were practically grown.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and he played football and got a scholarship. He went to Appalachian State.
Mr. McDaniel: Appalachian State? Okay.
Ms. Riddle: That’s the most God-awful drive.
Mr. McDaniel: It is, isn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: Oh, Lord. I had –
Mr. McDaniel: It’s up in the middle of the mountains in nowhere.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and I don’t think a day passes without it raining or snowing, or something. But he went there for a year, and he came back and he said, “Mama, I’m not going back to Appalachian State.” I said, “Well, what are you going to do?” He says, “I’m going to Middle Tennessee State because the equipment that I was working with,” – he was interested in the music industry and recording, and he said, “The stuff that I worked with in high school is much more –
Mr. McDaniel: Advanced.
Ms. Riddle: – than Appalachian State,” so he went to Middle Tennessee State.
Mr. McDaniel: And this was what, ’76 or ’77, right in that area?
Ms. Riddle: ’77 or ’78.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, I was at Belmont in Nashville doing the very same thing when he was at Middle Tennessee State, studying recording. They had a program there, so I’m very familiar with that. Tell me about your boys, what they did, and then we’re going to come back and talk a little bit about you.
Ms. Riddle: Well, the oldest one went to a trade school in Knoxville for a while. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t satisfied, and my stepmother said, “Why don’t you come and live with us and work at the university for a while, and then you’ll find yourself?” So, he did, and he went from job to job. The house that we left there had been rented, but then the people moved out – well, the man died and the lady moved out – and he moved into that.
Mr. McDaniel: In Athens?
Ms. Riddle: In Athens, so that made him have a place to live on his own, and he lived until the early ’90s, and I had a call. My stepmother’s mother lived to be a hundred and four, I think, and when she died, I went to her funeral. My son, in Charlotte, said, “If you’ll drive over, we’ll go down to Shiloh, Georgia, together.” So we did that, and we came back that night. We went one night, and came back the next night, and when – Brian was working the nightshift, and I went out to do some shopping, and my brother who lived in Athens called and wanted to speak to Brian. I said, “Well, Brian just went up to take a nap.” He said, “Well, leave a note: tell him to call me right away. It’s urgent.” I wrote a note, and left it on the desk and I went out, and when I came back – Brian actually heard the phone ring but he didn’t answer it. When I came back, he was standing there. He said, “Mama, Reggie is dead.”
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Ms. Riddle: They found him sitting in the park, dead.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: I knew he didn’t come to the funeral, but that’s not something a lot of people do.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: So, I had to go down there and bury my son.
Mr. McDaniel: And this was in ’90 –
Ms. Riddle: Let’s see. It was in the late ’90s, because Aaron was about two years old, so that would have been ’98 – ’98 or ’99.
Mr. McDaniel: Your other son, Brian, he lived in Charlotte, you said.
Ms. Riddle: Mhm. He still lives in Charlotte.
Mr. McDaniel: What does he do?
Ms. Riddle: He works for Schneider – no. He works for Food Lion now in their –
Mr. McDaniel: Distribution center?
Ms. Riddle: – well, yes, Distribution, but it has to do with their computers.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay. Well, let’s go back and talk about you, and let’s talk about your reaction to Oak Ridge. When you first came to Oak Ridge, what did you think of Oak Ridge? I know you weren’t happy. Did it make it any worse or any better?
Ms. Riddle: Well, I had visited Oak Ridge, and I enjoyed visiting. It was like going to a western movie. It was fun, but I didn’t have to stay here. But when I came here to stay, I just had to grin and bear it, and the fact that I had two children made a big difference. I just did what I had to do, and we made it.
Mr. McDaniel: I mean was there a community or was there a neighborhood?
Ms. Riddle: There was a neighborhood. It was a community. It was Scarboro Community. Our yard and the people next door, the Hatcher’s, there was an area that had had a power line going through, and when they took the power line down, Mr. Hatcher said, “I’m going to buy that so the children can have a place to play, and it was really like a playground. The kids were out there all the time, and they enjoyed themselves, and I knew what was going on.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly, and that was right next to you.
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, between you and –
Ms. Riddle: The next door –
Mr. McDaniel: – the Hatcher’s.
Ms. Riddle: – yes, the Hatcher’s, next door.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, Scarboro typically and traditionally has been like the black community of Oak Ridge.
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, did you come from that, in Athens, I mean –
Ms. Riddle: Yes. In Athens, where we lived, was called East Athens. Now, it was integrated to a point, but the street that we lived on, Peter Street, was the dividing line.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and when we were going to elementary school, there were a lot of fights. You’d just be walking along. I had a leather jacket on, and I had my books in my arm and that made my sleeve stand out, and I know I felt the touch of somebody as I passed this girl, but I didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything. And when I got to school and took my jacket off, she had had a knife in her hand. She cut my jacket.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? My goodness. Now, when you came to Oak Ridge, I mean, were there racial issues that were unusual?
Ms. Riddle: From time to time. Oh, yes.
Mr. McDaniel: I mean were they unusual or was it kind of the same kind of thing you’d faced in the past, in Georgia?
Ms. Riddle: Well, in Georgia and Chicago, too.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: If you’re black, you face issues. You learn to live with them, walk around them, step over them, or whatever, and that’s what I did.
Mr. McDaniel: And that was the way it was in Oak Ridge, when you came to Oak Ridge?
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, looking back, since you’ve been here that long, I mean has it changed or not? I mean do you think Oak Ridge is any different from any other place, as far as those issues are concerned?
Ms. Riddle: Well, I haven’t lived anyplace else for a long time, but I think there’s an undercurrent, so you just go about and do your thing, let everybody else do their thing; don’t cause unnecessary problems.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Right, and was that the same way at the workplace as it was in the community?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, in a sense, but it reached a point where if something went wrong in the workplace, you just said it, and they’d back off. But I worked in several areas of the hospital. I finally went on fulltime staff, and I worked on the geriatric floor first, which was called 4 North, and I worked on the telemetry unit as a secretary. During the process of working there, the supervisor, or vice president, whatever, decided that nurses’ aides or technicians were going to be phased out, and they offered me a job as a unit secretary, and I did that on a wing that was catering to sick people, people with heart problems, and whatever. But after about two or three years, I had a problem with somebody there. Brian graduated from high school. He made all-star team, football, and I think in February I had a letter from TSSAA saying that he had been selected to play in the all-star game and when it was going to be, and this was several months before. This was like February, and this was going to happen in I think June or July. I had plenty of vacation time. I requested time off for – and the supervisor, I didn’t give it to her; I gave it to the time clerk. This was in February or March that I gave it to her, and I didn’t hear anything from her. When the schedule for that timeframe came out, I was scheduled to work, and I went down and talked to her. I said, “Well, why am I scheduled to work?” She said, “Because it’s your week to work.” I said, “But I requested time off.” She said, “But your supervisor denied it.” I said, “Why?” And she couldn’t give me a reason because they had passed a rule that you couldn’t just take Saturday or Sunday off. I had enough to take any time I wanted, I took thirty days off once, but I think I asked for three days, and I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. I won’t be here,” and I turned and left. Nobody has ever to this day said anything to me about not showing up for work.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: I just didn’t go. When I got my paycheck, I said, “Shoot, I should have done this before,” because I didn’t have to pay as much tax.
Mr. McDaniel: There you go.
Ms. Riddle: So, we went down to Middle Tennessee, to Murfreesboro, to the –
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, MTSU.
Ms. Riddle: – yeah, to the all-star game.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, how long did you work at the hospital?
Ms. Riddle: I started in 1969, and I retired in 1997.
Mr. McDaniel: I’m sure you saw a lot of changes at the hospital, didn’t you?
Ms. Riddle: Oh, yes.
Mr. McDaniel: What are some that you can think of or remember, or talk about? Well, you can talk about any of them.
Ms. Riddle: Yeah, because I don’t work there anymore.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s exactly right.
Ms. Riddle: After Covenant took over, things started to change. Now, I was a member of the Union. I didn’t have any problems, specifically.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: There were people who were not a member of the Union who would have problems, and there was a man – it wasn’t Mr. Wisnet – his name was Ralph Lillard, and they could talk to him, and he listened to what they had to say, but as soon as Covenant got it, they sent George Matthews out here and they sent Ralph Lillard away, and that was not good –
Mr. McDaniel: That was not good.
Ms. Riddle: – not good for the poor people.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: That was ugly, but I left. I thank God that I was able to get out of it.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So, you retired.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, I retired.
Mr. McDaniel: How old were you when you left?
Ms. Riddle: I was sixty-five.
Mr. McDaniel: Retirement age?
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, so you could retire.
Ms. Riddle: Yeah. I had passed my birthday, but I had accumulated a lot of sick time and vacation time, and I could gather it all up and be paid for it when I retired.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: I think I had the limit. I don’t remember what it was, six months I believe, and I said, “Well, you know, I’ve been here all that time, I get that pay. My income tax is going to eat me up.” So, in September, I just kept working, and before December I went out to the Social Security office and filed for my Social Security. She said, “You can start getting your check right now,” and I said, “Nope, let it stay there,” and I told them I wanted to work one month in January, in the next year, and, at the end of January, I retired, so I got all that money back, and I didn’t have to pay all that extra income tax.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Well, that’s good.
Ms. Riddle: Well, you know, you have to scrap. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: Exactly right.
Ms. Riddle: And when you’re used to scrapping to survive, it’s in you. You just do it.
Mr. McDaniel: So, what have you been doing since you retired?
Ms. Riddle: Well, I did a little traveling, and I had a grandchild by this time, and I went to Charlotte, where he was, a lot, and then he was old enough to leave his parents and he thought he was supposed to come with me. They had him in a preschool facility that was very good. He was learning something, and I didn’t want to interfere with that, but once in a while I’d get him for a month, and he’d come over and stay with me. And it had reached the point – well, I would visit and I wouldn’t come home while he was there. They’d take him to school in the morning, and I’d leave, because that picture is still in my mind that day I was leaving and he was there. I took my bags down, my son got them and put them in the car, and he had on one of those little onesies – I can still see him tipping around barefoot. The car door was open, and he looked back at his mother and dad and said, “See ya!” and climbed up in that car.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: Oh, gosh, that was terrible for me. I picked him up, and he’s holding onto them saying, “See ya! See ya!” and I left him crying that day. So, after that, I never left there when he was home.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Well, we’re about through here. Is there anything else that you can reflect on about your time in Oak Ridge or anything you want to talk about that we’ve not talked about?
Ms. Riddle: I don’t really think so. I am devoted to the church that I go to. When I came here, they had dug the foundation and were starting to pour the foundation, and I’ve been a member there since then, and I’ve seen so many people come and go, and so many of the people that I have met and become close to are members of the church. It’s like a family, because I don’t have any family here, but I have neighbors who are like family. And there was a man who had a room at my mother’s house, because she only needed one bedroom, and he told her he needed a place to live and he did not want to live in a dormitory, so he stayed there. He called her Little Mama. He treated her like she was his mama, and he stayed with us through everything. He was right there.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: He’s ninety years old now and he’s been in the hospital recently, but I was there for him, he was there for me, and those are the kind of relationships that I’ve had here.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So, he’s probably the closest thing to family you’ve got here, isn’t he?
Ms. Riddle: That’s right.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, let me ask you. After your mother passed away, why did you stay here?
Ms. Riddle: Those two little boys, who were crying when we left Athens, they didn’t want to go back.
Mr. McDaniel: They didn’t want to go back, so - well, after they left, though, I mean by then, Oak Ridge was home, wasn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: By then, I was up in years, and I didn’t want to change jobs. I didn’t have a profession, per se, that I was practicing that I could change towns and live comfortably. I had a place to live here, I had friends, and I didn’t have to go anyplace. I noticed something about Oak Ridge shortly after I came here, and I asked a fellow about it. I said, “You know, I read in the paper where houses are broken into in the West End, and out in East Village and all over town, but you never hear anybody breaking in out here.” He said, “It’s because if they break in out here, they know that somebody’s going to tell, and you’re out here and they’re going to get you.” [laughter] There were times when I’d actually wake up in the morning and the door was still unlocked.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Not now, but then.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, back then, but you felt safe?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, I felt comfortable.
Mr. McDaniel: And it was one of those communities where everybody looked out for everybody else, didn’t they?
Ms. Riddle: Yes. Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: And I’m sure that gave you a sense of security.
Ms. Riddle: There was a man who lived across the street. His wife was dead and their son had gone, he had gone in service, and he left his things, like his record player, his music systems, and his clothes there in the house. He worked the nightshift. He came home at twelve o’clock, and some of Ricky’s things were missing, and he started looking around and talking, and someone told him the name of a person, and he went to that house. He didn’t say anything to the boy. He just talked to his grandfather. His grandfather called him and he got all of his stuff back.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] What’s it like now, though?
Ms. Riddle: Well, people don’t break in or steal. The biggest problem now is the drug scene, and that’s in all areas of the city.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: And the noise related to the – you know, those loud boxes in their cars, that kind of thing, but in general, nobody has any complaints, to my knowledge. It’s a rare thing to see a police car out there, to see them stopped anyplace. They go through, but they don’t stop.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, all right. Anything else you want to say or talk about, here’s your chance. [laughter] This is your chance.
Ms. Riddle: [laughter] I’m grateful for the friends that I have in Oak Ridge. I respect them, they respect me, and I’m grateful for the God that looks after me. He was there for me from the beginning, and he’s still – I go to bed at night, nobody in the house but me, I wake up in the morning, nobody in the house but me, and everything is fine.
Mr. McDaniel: Very good. Thank you so much.
[end of recording]

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ORAL HISTORY OF THERESA RIDDLE
Interviewed and filmed by Keith McDaniel
March 29, 2011
Mr. McDaniel: I’m Keith McDaniel, and today is March 29, 2011, and I’m here with Miss Theresa Riddle, and thank you for taking time to be with us.
Ms. Riddle: Glad to help.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, let’s go back and just talk about where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
Ms. Riddle: Well, I was born in Athens, Georgia, and I grew up there. I went to a trade school in Atlanta after completing high school, and I went back to Athens and lived there until after I married.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, what kind of trade school did you go to?
Ms. Riddle: A beauty school.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, a beauty school. Okay.
Ms. Riddle: After I got married, my husband was in service, but we moved to Chicago when he got out, and we lived there as long as we were together.
Mr. McDaniel: Now what year did you graduate high school?
Ms. Riddle: 1948.
Mr. McDaniel: So you went to Atlanta about then.
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: ’48, and how long were you in Atlanta, a year?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, but I couldn’t go to the school that I wanted to go to when I got out of high school. They had a rule: I wasn’t eighteen years old.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Riddle: I had to wait until I was eighteen years old. So I went back home, and my family had a neighborhood grocery store, but I didn’t want to work there. I had worked there all my life.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: I got a job in a ladies apparel shop doing different things, including the window decorations. I did that for a while, and then I went back to school, and upon completion, I came back to Athens and I worked in a beauty shop until I got ready to go to Chicago.
Mr. McDaniel: So once you got through in Atlanta and –
Ms. Riddle: I got my license –
Mr. McDaniel: – got your license, you went back –
Ms. Riddle: I took the state board and I got my license.
Mr. McDaniel: So you went back to Athens and worked in a beauty shop there. How long were you there?
Ms. Riddle: I was there about maybe five years.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Four or five years.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you meet your husband while you were there?
Ms. Riddle: We went to high school together. I met him, well, actually, in junior high school. When the Korean War started, he went in service, and he came home. We didn’t get along well. We should have stayed away from each other, but we were always arguing with each other, and then we got married.
Mr. McDaniel: It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: But it didn’t last. I left Chicago. I took the children and left Chicago, and I went to Atlanta, and in Atlanta I somehow had some information about a doctor who needed some help, and I went and interviewed with his wife. The problem was, she was having a difficult pregnancy and she needed someone there. Johnny was about four years old, and she needed somebody to help her with him in the evening.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: I went there about four o’clock every day and stayed until Johnny was in bed and it just kind of expanded. I went to the office and worked one day a week.
Mr. McDaniel: How long were you in Chicago?
Ms. Riddle: I was in Chicago from I guess ’53 to ’58, ’59, because Brian was born in ’58. In ’59, I went back to Georgia, and I stayed in Atlanta for a year, and I was about to really settle in in Atlanta, and I told my grandmother, who was still running the store in Athens, I told her I was going to try to find a house, and she said, “Before you do that, come home. I want to talk to you.” So, the children and I went home one weekend, and it was pleasant. And she never did say why she wanted to talk to me. So we were getting ready to get a taxi to go to the bus station, and I said, “Well, we’re getting ready to go,” and tears came in her eyes, and she said, “The doctor has told me I’m going to have to stop working in the store, and I don’t want to see it closed, and I don’t want to see someone else running it. If you’ll come here and work in the store, I’ll see to it that you and your children don’t want for anything.” I said, “Okay.” At this point, I was still working for the Bryant’s, and I said, “Well, as soon as Mrs. Bryant has her baby, I promised to stay there and see her through this pregnancy, and, as soon as that happens, I’ll come back.” So, I did, and I worked in the store, the place I hated. I guess it’s because I had to do it when I was growing up, and the longer I stayed there, the more responsibility I took on for the store, and she just kind of settled down and enjoyed life.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: She was even able to do some traveling, and I was glad. She had been a good grandmother, and when my parents were divorced, she took us so we didn’t have to be separated. We didn’t have to be going from place to place.
Mr. McDaniel: So, she raised you, basically?
Ms. Riddle: More or less. Yes. My mother worked for a Navy school, and it was taking part of the University of Georgia, and she worked there until it closed, and when it closed there was a dietician there who knew her, who came to Oak Ridge, and when she came to Oak Ridge, a lot of the people who had worked for her were no longer working because this was a pretty large facility and it was closing, and she sent for my mother. See, my mother was a teacher before she married my daddy. She came to Oak Ridge and was put to work at the hospital in the formula room. In those days, each baby had his own special formula, and her knowledge of math made it easy for her to do it, and she stayed there as long as they had a formula room. And when they closed the formula room, she went to pediatrics and worked there because there were always babies who had to have a special formula, and this is what she did until she retired, and she retired – she got sick. I knew she didn’t look good, and I asked her, I said, “Why don’t you see a specialist or something?” “Well, I’m doing fine now.” Her birthday was January 16th, and I called her on her birthday to wish her a happy birthday, and I asked her, “How are you doing?” She says, “I’m doing just fine.” I think it was on the 20th of January, her neighbor called me and said, “Your mother is in the hospital and they’re going to operate.” This was in January of 1968. I said, “I’ll be there.” So, I got a bus and I came up. Coming into Knoxville, we hit the worst snow. It was terrible, but we made it, and I called the lady. I said, “As soon as the next bus comes in to go to Oak Ridge, I’ll be there.” She said, “You’re at the bus station in Knoxville?” and I said, “Yes.” She said, “I’ll send somebody for you.” But it wasn’t snowing in Oak Ridge, so she didn’t know that it was snowing, but the person that she sent was a skillful driver, and she made it, but there were wrecks all along the way. I got here, she had already had surgery, and they brought her out to take her to ICU, and the doctor came out to talk to me and he said, “She’s doing okay now, but this is bad news. She has about a year to live.”
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Ms. Riddle: I said, “Well, when she gets over this initial surgery, would it be okay for me to take her home with me?” He said, “No, I’d rather she stayed here because we have facilities and experts, and she would do a lot better.” So, I said, “Okay, I’ll have to move here, then.” She stayed in the hospital about a week, something like that, and I didn’t talk to her about it because I didn’t tell her that she had cancer, and I told her, I said, “Well, you know, it’s hard to leave the children,” although the house that I lived in was next door to my father’s house.” I said, “It’s hard to leave them, so why don’t I just move here so when you need me, I’ll be here?” She said, “Well, just wait until school closes,” so I did, and when school closed June 15th, we moved here. It was awful.
Mr. McDaniel: That was ’69?
Ms. Riddle: 1968.
Mr. McDaniel: June 15, 1968. Yes. Why was it awful?
Ms. Riddle: The children didn’t want to come here. They were satisfied where they were.
Mr. McDaniel: How old were they by now?
Ms. Riddle: One was ready to start junior high school.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, so he was ten or eleven, I guess?
Ms. Riddle: He was about eleven, and the other one was two years younger. I had to enroll them in school here, a whole different system. One went to Jefferson, and the other one went to Woodland. The one who went –
Mr. McDaniel: When you moved here, where did you live?
Ms. Riddle: My mother had a house. She had a duplex, and she was living in half of it, and someone else was living in the other, so she told them that she was going to have to have the whole house. So we moved in with her.
Mr. McDaniel: Where was that?
Ms. Riddle: On Spelman Avenue. The only place I ever lived in Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? And you still live there?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and the children went to school, and I had a hard time that first year with the oldest one. They were strangers, and they didn’t know the routine. They didn’t know who was whose cousin, and there were a lot of fights, and that oldest one had reached the point where he’d fight if you looked at him.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: He was always ready to fight. The youngest one didn’t. So, after I got the oldest one calmed down, it turned out that he was okay. By the time he got to high school, he was doing what – and I encouraged him to take typing because I knew his interest in sports, and he wrote for the Oak Leaf while he was in high school, sports-related, and the younger one was small, a little guy, but he was fast, and he liked football, so he got involved with football at the Boys Club.
Mr. McDaniel: So, after a while, they kind of settled in?
Ms. Riddle: They settled in. My youngest son told me not long ago, he said, “You know, one of the worst things that happened to us coming to Oak Ridge, we didn’t know who was related to who, and if you say anything about anybody, it was their cousin.” Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly.
Ms. Riddle: But they made it, and Reggie graduated. He went in the Navy, and they gave him a discharge because he had a sinking syndrome.
Mr. McDaniel: What is that?
Ms. Riddle: There are people who can swim but they don’t float, and he was one of those.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: So, they gave him a discharge, and he came back at a time when I needed him because my mother had been in and out of the hospital, and he stayed there with her.
Mr. McDaniel: So, she lived a while, didn’t she?
Ms. Riddle: Yes. He said one year, and oh, I guess it was ’72 that she got sick again, and another doctor in that group operated on her this time, and he said, “Well, she’s got a year.” No, he said, “She’s got six months,” and I never told her that. She did okay for another year or two, from ’68 to ’75. She died in ’75. But the last time, Dr. Hendricks, he said, “I think we’ve hit the end of the line.” Well, we’d been lucky so far.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, she’d lived seven years from that first surgery.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, so we just prepared, and as God would have it, Reggie came home and he was there with her. I’d call from work. I tried to save my days so that when she was really bad I could be with her, and I’d call and he had a way of telling me how she was doing without actually saying it. It worked out fine. Well, finally, I came home one day and I realized that she was a lot sicker than she had been, so I called the oncologist and he said, “The hospital’s full. As soon as we can get a bed, we’ll put her in the hospital. That would make life better for her because she could get her IVs going.” She could be comfortable. She had reached a point where she couldn’t swallow. It was terrible. But that night was the worst night. I was up and down all night with her. She had a little couch in her bedroom, and I stayed in there on that little couch, and the next morning I got up and I said, “You’re feeling better?” And she said, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Would you like some coffee?” She said, “Yes, a half a cup.” I brought the coffee, I made a cup for myself, and I got the paper. I gave her the coffee and stood there with her while she sipped it, and she said, “That’s all I want.” She was sitting on the side of the bed, and she turned around to lie down, and she hugged me but she didn’t say anything, and she turned around and lay down, and something told me, “Check on her,” – I was going to sit on the porch and read the paper – and she was gone.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Well, you know, I did what I could.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure you did.
Ms. Riddle: And my reason for being here no longer existed, and these children, who left Athens crying, no longer wanted to go back to Athens –
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, they loved it here.
Ms. Riddle: – and I stayed here with them.
Mr. McDaniel: I’m sure that was a hard time for you, and from ’68 to ’75, I mean, you know, not only was your mother very ill and you didn’t really want to be here, your family didn’t want to come, so it was tough for you, wasn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: It was, but in the process – you know, every day, I make the most of it. Someone told me that Community Action had a program that I might could get a job through, so I went over and they said that they had had a job at a lab but it was filled, and if I was willing to work at the hospital, they would see what they could do. So I worked at the hospital four days a week, but I was paid by Community Action. One day a week, I went to Community Action. The system was set up so that people who didn’t have an education, who could not read, write, or count, Friday was the day to learn.
Mr. McDaniel: To learn, right.
Ms. Riddle: And, as it turned out, I was one of those who I didn’t need that, so I was trying to help those who did, and I spent Friday there, but that was part of the contract. At the end of six months, the hospital hired me.
Mr. McDaniel: Was this early on, right after you came to Oak Ridge?
Ms. Riddle: This was before my mother died. It was ’69 I started working at the hospital, and I worked various areas. I was called ‘occasional,’ and sometimes I worked two shifts a day. I’d go in at seven o’clock, go home, come back at eleven.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and my mother said one day, “Honey, you need to stop that.” I said, “Well, I’ll have to make it while I can.”
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly. We’re going to come back and pick back up here in a minute, but what happened to your grandmother and the store after you left?
Ms. Riddle: Oh, she died.
Mr. McDaniel: Did she?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and when she was doing her will, she asked me if I wanted the store, and by this time I realized that it was more than one person, it needed more than one person, and I had the two boys and they could help me, but sooner or later they would be leaving, and I said, “No, I don’t want the store,” so she gave me her house instead. And the children and I moved into the house, and my father married the second time and he had eight children, and he had plenty of help to work in the store, so I let somebody else bear that burden.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, was that his mother?
Ms. Riddle: It was his mother and he was an only child, and he acted like an only child. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] So, he had eight children. Now, was this with your mother?
Ms. Riddle: No, he had eight children with his second wife. My mother had four children, one died, and there were just three of us, two brothers. In the midst of this, before my mother died, in ’72 my brother died in Atlanta. He was working in Atlanta, and he died. My mother died in ’75, in June of ’75. In March of ’76, the youngest brother of the three of us died.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: I had a call that he was dead, and I went, and my daddy was sick and I took care of the arrangements. Dad went in the hospital. I stopped at the hospital on my way out after it was all done, and he told me what he had. I said, “Well, everything is taken care of,” because Ray had been in service. He had that kind of insurance. He was okay; he was covered. I did his business, and it didn’t cost me a lot. So, he said, “Well, when I get out of the hospital, I’ll be in touch with you,” and before the week was over, I had a call: he was dead.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: So, I went back, but I didn’t worry too much. I worried, but I didn’t have the sole responsibility because he had a wife and eight children. I dealt with that, and this is within close to a year, I had lost two –
Mr. McDaniel: Your mother, your father and your younger brother.
Ms. Riddle: – right.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Ms. Riddle: But you just keep pushing. You have to.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So, after your mother passed away, by this time I guess your boys, I mean they were grown, practically, weren’t they?
Ms. Riddle: The oldest one had gone in the Navy and come out, and the youngest one was I think a senior in high school.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay, right, so they were practically grown.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and he played football and got a scholarship. He went to Appalachian State.
Mr. McDaniel: Appalachian State? Okay.
Ms. Riddle: That’s the most God-awful drive.
Mr. McDaniel: It is, isn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: Oh, Lord. I had –
Mr. McDaniel: It’s up in the middle of the mountains in nowhere.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and I don’t think a day passes without it raining or snowing, or something. But he went there for a year, and he came back and he said, “Mama, I’m not going back to Appalachian State.” I said, “Well, what are you going to do?” He says, “I’m going to Middle Tennessee State because the equipment that I was working with,” – he was interested in the music industry and recording, and he said, “The stuff that I worked with in high school is much more –
Mr. McDaniel: Advanced.
Ms. Riddle: – than Appalachian State,” so he went to Middle Tennessee State.
Mr. McDaniel: And this was what, ’76 or ’77, right in that area?
Ms. Riddle: ’77 or ’78.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, I was at Belmont in Nashville doing the very same thing when he was at Middle Tennessee State, studying recording. They had a program there, so I’m very familiar with that. Tell me about your boys, what they did, and then we’re going to come back and talk a little bit about you.
Ms. Riddle: Well, the oldest one went to a trade school in Knoxville for a while. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t satisfied, and my stepmother said, “Why don’t you come and live with us and work at the university for a while, and then you’ll find yourself?” So, he did, and he went from job to job. The house that we left there had been rented, but then the people moved out – well, the man died and the lady moved out – and he moved into that.
Mr. McDaniel: In Athens?
Ms. Riddle: In Athens, so that made him have a place to live on his own, and he lived until the early ’90s, and I had a call. My stepmother’s mother lived to be a hundred and four, I think, and when she died, I went to her funeral. My son, in Charlotte, said, “If you’ll drive over, we’ll go down to Shiloh, Georgia, together.” So we did that, and we came back that night. We went one night, and came back the next night, and when – Brian was working the nightshift, and I went out to do some shopping, and my brother who lived in Athens called and wanted to speak to Brian. I said, “Well, Brian just went up to take a nap.” He said, “Well, leave a note: tell him to call me right away. It’s urgent.” I wrote a note, and left it on the desk and I went out, and when I came back – Brian actually heard the phone ring but he didn’t answer it. When I came back, he was standing there. He said, “Mama, Reggie is dead.”
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Ms. Riddle: They found him sitting in the park, dead.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: I knew he didn’t come to the funeral, but that’s not something a lot of people do.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: So, I had to go down there and bury my son.
Mr. McDaniel: And this was in ’90 –
Ms. Riddle: Let’s see. It was in the late ’90s, because Aaron was about two years old, so that would have been ’98 – ’98 or ’99.
Mr. McDaniel: Your other son, Brian, he lived in Charlotte, you said.
Ms. Riddle: Mhm. He still lives in Charlotte.
Mr. McDaniel: What does he do?
Ms. Riddle: He works for Schneider – no. He works for Food Lion now in their –
Mr. McDaniel: Distribution center?
Ms. Riddle: – well, yes, Distribution, but it has to do with their computers.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay. Well, let’s go back and talk about you, and let’s talk about your reaction to Oak Ridge. When you first came to Oak Ridge, what did you think of Oak Ridge? I know you weren’t happy. Did it make it any worse or any better?
Ms. Riddle: Well, I had visited Oak Ridge, and I enjoyed visiting. It was like going to a western movie. It was fun, but I didn’t have to stay here. But when I came here to stay, I just had to grin and bear it, and the fact that I had two children made a big difference. I just did what I had to do, and we made it.
Mr. McDaniel: I mean was there a community or was there a neighborhood?
Ms. Riddle: There was a neighborhood. It was a community. It was Scarboro Community. Our yard and the people next door, the Hatcher’s, there was an area that had had a power line going through, and when they took the power line down, Mr. Hatcher said, “I’m going to buy that so the children can have a place to play, and it was really like a playground. The kids were out there all the time, and they enjoyed themselves, and I knew what was going on.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly, and that was right next to you.
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, between you and –
Ms. Riddle: The next door –
Mr. McDaniel: – the Hatcher’s.
Ms. Riddle: – yes, the Hatcher’s, next door.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, Scarboro typically and traditionally has been like the black community of Oak Ridge.
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, did you come from that, in Athens, I mean –
Ms. Riddle: Yes. In Athens, where we lived, was called East Athens. Now, it was integrated to a point, but the street that we lived on, Peter Street, was the dividing line.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, and when we were going to elementary school, there were a lot of fights. You’d just be walking along. I had a leather jacket on, and I had my books in my arm and that made my sleeve stand out, and I know I felt the touch of somebody as I passed this girl, but I didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything. And when I got to school and took my jacket off, she had had a knife in her hand. She cut my jacket.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? My goodness. Now, when you came to Oak Ridge, I mean, were there racial issues that were unusual?
Ms. Riddle: From time to time. Oh, yes.
Mr. McDaniel: I mean were they unusual or was it kind of the same kind of thing you’d faced in the past, in Georgia?
Ms. Riddle: Well, in Georgia and Chicago, too.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: If you’re black, you face issues. You learn to live with them, walk around them, step over them, or whatever, and that’s what I did.
Mr. McDaniel: And that was the way it was in Oak Ridge, when you came to Oak Ridge?
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, looking back, since you’ve been here that long, I mean has it changed or not? I mean do you think Oak Ridge is any different from any other place, as far as those issues are concerned?
Ms. Riddle: Well, I haven’t lived anyplace else for a long time, but I think there’s an undercurrent, so you just go about and do your thing, let everybody else do their thing; don’t cause unnecessary problems.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Right, and was that the same way at the workplace as it was in the community?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, in a sense, but it reached a point where if something went wrong in the workplace, you just said it, and they’d back off. But I worked in several areas of the hospital. I finally went on fulltime staff, and I worked on the geriatric floor first, which was called 4 North, and I worked on the telemetry unit as a secretary. During the process of working there, the supervisor, or vice president, whatever, decided that nurses’ aides or technicians were going to be phased out, and they offered me a job as a unit secretary, and I did that on a wing that was catering to sick people, people with heart problems, and whatever. But after about two or three years, I had a problem with somebody there. Brian graduated from high school. He made all-star team, football, and I think in February I had a letter from TSSAA saying that he had been selected to play in the all-star game and when it was going to be, and this was several months before. This was like February, and this was going to happen in I think June or July. I had plenty of vacation time. I requested time off for – and the supervisor, I didn’t give it to her; I gave it to the time clerk. This was in February or March that I gave it to her, and I didn’t hear anything from her. When the schedule for that timeframe came out, I was scheduled to work, and I went down and talked to her. I said, “Well, why am I scheduled to work?” She said, “Because it’s your week to work.” I said, “But I requested time off.” She said, “But your supervisor denied it.” I said, “Why?” And she couldn’t give me a reason because they had passed a rule that you couldn’t just take Saturday or Sunday off. I had enough to take any time I wanted, I took thirty days off once, but I think I asked for three days, and I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. I won’t be here,” and I turned and left. Nobody has ever to this day said anything to me about not showing up for work.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: I just didn’t go. When I got my paycheck, I said, “Shoot, I should have done this before,” because I didn’t have to pay as much tax.
Mr. McDaniel: There you go.
Ms. Riddle: So, we went down to Middle Tennessee, to Murfreesboro, to the –
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, MTSU.
Ms. Riddle: – yeah, to the all-star game.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, how long did you work at the hospital?
Ms. Riddle: I started in 1969, and I retired in 1997.
Mr. McDaniel: I’m sure you saw a lot of changes at the hospital, didn’t you?
Ms. Riddle: Oh, yes.
Mr. McDaniel: What are some that you can think of or remember, or talk about? Well, you can talk about any of them.
Ms. Riddle: Yeah, because I don’t work there anymore.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s exactly right.
Ms. Riddle: After Covenant took over, things started to change. Now, I was a member of the Union. I didn’t have any problems, specifically.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: There were people who were not a member of the Union who would have problems, and there was a man – it wasn’t Mr. Wisnet – his name was Ralph Lillard, and they could talk to him, and he listened to what they had to say, but as soon as Covenant got it, they sent George Matthews out here and they sent Ralph Lillard away, and that was not good –
Mr. McDaniel: That was not good.
Ms. Riddle: – not good for the poor people.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: That was ugly, but I left. I thank God that I was able to get out of it.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So, you retired.
Ms. Riddle: Yes, I retired.
Mr. McDaniel: How old were you when you left?
Ms. Riddle: I was sixty-five.
Mr. McDaniel: Retirement age?
Ms. Riddle: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, so you could retire.
Ms. Riddle: Yeah. I had passed my birthday, but I had accumulated a lot of sick time and vacation time, and I could gather it all up and be paid for it when I retired.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Riddle: I think I had the limit. I don’t remember what it was, six months I believe, and I said, “Well, you know, I’ve been here all that time, I get that pay. My income tax is going to eat me up.” So, in September, I just kept working, and before December I went out to the Social Security office and filed for my Social Security. She said, “You can start getting your check right now,” and I said, “Nope, let it stay there,” and I told them I wanted to work one month in January, in the next year, and, at the end of January, I retired, so I got all that money back, and I didn’t have to pay all that extra income tax.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Well, that’s good.
Ms. Riddle: Well, you know, you have to scrap. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: Exactly right.
Ms. Riddle: And when you’re used to scrapping to survive, it’s in you. You just do it.
Mr. McDaniel: So, what have you been doing since you retired?
Ms. Riddle: Well, I did a little traveling, and I had a grandchild by this time, and I went to Charlotte, where he was, a lot, and then he was old enough to leave his parents and he thought he was supposed to come with me. They had him in a preschool facility that was very good. He was learning something, and I didn’t want to interfere with that, but once in a while I’d get him for a month, and he’d come over and stay with me. And it had reached the point – well, I would visit and I wouldn’t come home while he was there. They’d take him to school in the morning, and I’d leave, because that picture is still in my mind that day I was leaving and he was there. I took my bags down, my son got them and put them in the car, and he had on one of those little onesies – I can still see him tipping around barefoot. The car door was open, and he looked back at his mother and dad and said, “See ya!” and climbed up in that car.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Riddle: Oh, gosh, that was terrible for me. I picked him up, and he’s holding onto them saying, “See ya! See ya!” and I left him crying that day. So, after that, I never left there when he was home.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Well, we’re about through here. Is there anything else that you can reflect on about your time in Oak Ridge or anything you want to talk about that we’ve not talked about?
Ms. Riddle: I don’t really think so. I am devoted to the church that I go to. When I came here, they had dug the foundation and were starting to pour the foundation, and I’ve been a member there since then, and I’ve seen so many people come and go, and so many of the people that I have met and become close to are members of the church. It’s like a family, because I don’t have any family here, but I have neighbors who are like family. And there was a man who had a room at my mother’s house, because she only needed one bedroom, and he told her he needed a place to live and he did not want to live in a dormitory, so he stayed there. He called her Little Mama. He treated her like she was his mama, and he stayed with us through everything. He was right there.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: He’s ninety years old now and he’s been in the hospital recently, but I was there for him, he was there for me, and those are the kind of relationships that I’ve had here.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So, he’s probably the closest thing to family you’ve got here, isn’t he?
Ms. Riddle: That’s right.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, let me ask you. After your mother passed away, why did you stay here?
Ms. Riddle: Those two little boys, who were crying when we left Athens, they didn’t want to go back.
Mr. McDaniel: They didn’t want to go back, so - well, after they left, though, I mean by then, Oak Ridge was home, wasn’t it?
Ms. Riddle: By then, I was up in years, and I didn’t want to change jobs. I didn’t have a profession, per se, that I was practicing that I could change towns and live comfortably. I had a place to live here, I had friends, and I didn’t have to go anyplace. I noticed something about Oak Ridge shortly after I came here, and I asked a fellow about it. I said, “You know, I read in the paper where houses are broken into in the West End, and out in East Village and all over town, but you never hear anybody breaking in out here.” He said, “It’s because if they break in out here, they know that somebody’s going to tell, and you’re out here and they’re going to get you.” [laughter] There were times when I’d actually wake up in the morning and the door was still unlocked.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Riddle: Not now, but then.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, back then, but you felt safe?
Ms. Riddle: Yes, I felt comfortable.
Mr. McDaniel: And it was one of those communities where everybody looked out for everybody else, didn’t they?
Ms. Riddle: Yes. Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: And I’m sure that gave you a sense of security.
Ms. Riddle: There was a man who lived across the street. His wife was dead and their son had gone, he had gone in service, and he left his things, like his record player, his music systems, and his clothes there in the house. He worked the nightshift. He came home at twelve o’clock, and some of Ricky’s things were missing, and he started looking around and talking, and someone told him the name of a person, and he went to that house. He didn’t say anything to the boy. He just talked to his grandfather. His grandfather called him and he got all of his stuff back.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] What’s it like now, though?
Ms. Riddle: Well, people don’t break in or steal. The biggest problem now is the drug scene, and that’s in all areas of the city.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Riddle: And the noise related to the – you know, those loud boxes in their cars, that kind of thing, but in general, nobody has any complaints, to my knowledge. It’s a rare thing to see a police car out there, to see them stopped anyplace. They go through, but they don’t stop.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, all right. Anything else you want to say or talk about, here’s your chance. [laughter] This is your chance.
Ms. Riddle: [laughter] I’m grateful for the friends that I have in Oak Ridge. I respect them, they respect me, and I’m grateful for the God that looks after me. He was there for me from the beginning, and he’s still – I go to bed at night, nobody in the house but me, I wake up in the morning, nobody in the house but me, and everything is fine.
Mr. McDaniel: Very good. Thank you so much.
[end of recording]